


Motives

by S_J_Ace



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Assisted Suicide, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Death, Ficlet, Gen, Kokichi Ouma Month, One Shot, Sad Ending, Short One Shot, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24735484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_J_Ace/pseuds/S_J_Ace
Summary: Do you know how long it takes for a guy who just got shot and has been coughing up blood for the past few weeks to climb up some stairs and turn on a camera to film a hydraulic press dropping?Long enough for the guy under the press to think about some stuff.---Why did this happen to me?…What a dull thing to wonder before you die.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32
Collections: Kokichi Ouma Month 2020





	Motives

_ Why did this happen to me? _

…

What a dull thing to wonder before you die.

Probably what Gonta thought too. Given the memory loss and all.

There was a really simple answer though.

Murderers get the death penalty.

Those are the rules.

…

Those rules weren’t exactly fair, were they? That’s what Momota would say. “It’s not fair.” Idiot.

Human beings were so fragile.

“Gonta would never do something like that.”

But he would. Kokichi watched him strangle Miu. All he had to do was show him a little video about how they were the last people on Earth.

Which wasn’t true. Probably. No definitely not. Kokichi knew how to sniff out a lie. These facilities weren’t built for people to survive in them. They were so clearly constructed from the ground up to be made for killing. And there were cameras. Someone wanted this so, so badly.

Sick mother fucker.

...

Would Kokichi have done it? In Gonta’s position?

Well, the obvious answer was no. It was the answer that Kokichi felt instinctively.

Except that was exactly what made Kokichi so sure he couldn’t trust that sentiment. Because the obvious and instinctual had been untrustworthy from the very beginning of this game. 

One rule. No killing people.

That was in his motive video. 

The one with all the fake blood. The one that made his heart ache despite the people in the video clearly not being malnourished enough to be prisoners. 

None of his feelings or memories made any sense at all.

He was like Gonta that way.

Except unlike that bastard he actually had at least half a brain cell devoted to fighting back.

The part of him that blanched at the thought of death, the thought of a complete human sentience being deleted from the world, that couldn’t be trusted either.

Miu hadn’t felt it. Gonta hadn’t either.

“The only rule is no killing!”

Why the fuck would that be in a video that was supposed to give him a motivation to participate in the killing game?

There was only one reason for that line in the video, for the feelings in his brain.

It was to mark him for death.

Because this was a game, he had to remind himself. It was a game where people died. 

If he hadn’t used Gonta, someone else would have. If Miu hadn’t died, she would’ve killed someone else and Shuichi would’ve ended up getting her executed anyway. Kokichi had minimized the net cause of death. None of the remaining players on the board had the vast physical or technological advantages that Gonta or Miu would have had in trying to commit another murder. 

Well. Except for Killer girl.

Holding Kaito should’ve taken care of her, though. His plan to end the killing game really had been good. Even now, looking back, there probably wasn’t a better plan he could’ve come up with. He had disabled the mastermind’s technological enforcers, which had left him free to put the remaining suspects under his thumb. Since this was a game to be watched, it was obvious that Kaito was the protagonist. He embodied all of the standard tropes. Dumb. Stupidly friendly. Idiotically trusting. Did he mention that he wasn’t smart? For a while Kokichi had suspected it was an act so that the weird bearded liar could live out some sort of hero complex, but if Kaito really was the mastermind did it entirely make sense for him to give himself a disease? Coughing blood had not looked fun, and Kokichi’s experimenting in the last trial had humiliated Kaito to the point where he was pretty sure that if Kaito really had been the mastermind Kokichi would’ve seen better consequence by now. That trial made it pretty clear that the mastermind had to be someone less assuming… During the second trial Harukawa had been his biggest suspect. You know, because of the room full of guns and such. Except now that very fact kind of ruled her out. She had breached that level of super extra suspicious where she just wasn’t suspicious at all anymore. 

Well, except she had just killed him, hadn’t she?

Dammit.

He shouldn’t have trusted her.

Whatever. Whatever.

It didn’t matter, he was going to save her life anyway. His reasons for that were another example of his emotions trying to betray him. Because he hated Killer girl from the very depths of his soul. A person who didn’t see anything at all wrong with murder… that disgusted him. But Kokichi couldn’t trust his feelings, he had to trust his brain. And his brain said that Killer girl wouldn’t die without being killed and Kaito on the other hand… Well, he probably had more blood outside of him and inside his lungs than he had in his actual veins. Kokichi bet he wouldn’t last the next two days. Even if Kokichi’s plan to break the killing game didn’t work, the net loss of life would be lower because of his actions.

Maybe it would make up for-

No. Gonta would’ve died anyway, remember? Kokichi had just snatched him up as a pawn before any other player could, that was all. He was easily manipulated and willing to murder. Kokichi couldn’t…

…

That was a lousy excuse. He was still dead.

Kokichi’s plan hadn’t worked.

What was he even talking about? Net loss of life?

Disgusting.

Kaito still had a chance to live. Probably. Maybe.

…

Unless Shuichi went and fucked it up.

…

No, if Shuichi figured out the truth, it’d be Kokichi’s fault for not being able to plan around him.

That unpredictable piece of shit. If anyone deserved to survive this dumbass killing game it was probably him.

… 

Kokichi wasn’t sure Shuichi would do it, if he were Gonta.

He didn’t know anything about Shuichi, though.

Gonta’s trial had really proved that. Kokichi spent so much energy trying to dismantle Kaito’s position of authority in the group. Trying to get them to think for themselves. Notice how they were all being manipulated. Make them think for one goddamn second to be even a little bit suspicious of the bullshit that-

…

But he just sounded like an asshole.

…

Haha, yeah maybe the punch had been a bit excessive.

Whatever. He could work with being an asshole when he was pulling the mastermind schtick. He could work with that when he was certain that the killing game was about to end.

…

Kaito would do it. Kaito was doing it right now. Killing him. Kokichi had foreseen that. Another good reason why it had to be Kaito who he grabbed out of the herd. Because he could be made to kill someone like Gonta could be made to kill someone. And he might be able to manipulate everyone else into condoning it, like Akamatsu had. Kokichi had let him become too powerful.

Hah. Shuichi’s little speech after the trial sure had made that clear… 

This was stupid.

Ugh. It was all so stupid.

He shouldn’t have trusted Killer girl. Or, at least, he shouldn’t have trusted how far the game was going to let her character arc go.

…

Damn it. Kaito was going to kill him. There was no other way to do it.

He tried to convince himself he was already dead, but he couldn’t. The pain of his wounds, and the poisoned blood flowing out of them reminded him how desperately his body was still trying to stay alive.

_ I don’t want to die. _

…

That’s probably what everyone thinks when they’re about to die.

What a boring last thought.

The metal press hit his nose first, but he didn’t have time to process the cool touch of the metal surface.

It hit his nose and then-

…

…

… 

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of things I'm thinking about when I'm writing Kokichi. For the prompt of "Motives" for Ouma month I wanted to explore some of the reasons why I think he does certain things in cannon. Quintessential to my view of Kokichi's motives that I don't think he would've had the self perspective to comment on even in retrospect is that he is unable to consider the idea of letting other people help him. I think DRV3 did a better job of portraying the power of friendship than most shounen anime, simply because they act out the tragedy of paranoia and isolation that people under stress go through without it in Kokichi's character.


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